When I first migrated my personal blog from Movable Type to WordPress I was just interested in getting it up and running as quickly as possible. After going through several themes I decided I would use Pixel.

I liked the dark look of Pixel and it seemed like an easy to read template. For the most part that template has worked. There were two issues though that just seemed to rub me the wrong way.

I wasn’t sure I really liked the background graphic but that is something that can be changed rather easily. The problem of course is that the background image wasn’t just the graphic itself but also included the area for the text and heading as well.

Still I didn’t have a lot of time to mess with things so I quickly created a graphic and put the theme in place. Since I was already in Photoshop I decided I would make a few other graphic files as well so that I could swap them out when I got tired of one.

That of course led to a modification of the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) whereby the site would pull a different background graphic for each day of the month. After all why should I spend time changing background graphics when I can let the system change them for me automatically?

This theme was working and I figured I would just add the content and let it go its merry way. The more I started looking at it though the more I was bothered by the static width of the theme.

I’ve gotten used to the fluid width that CSS can provide and I really wanted my blog to be more fluid. The problem is that Pixel was based specifically on a static width. With a little time on my hands now that baseball season is over I decided to rewrite the code and make it a fluid theme.

I changed out the various areas and removed the static widths from the CSS. I recreated all of the graphics to be more fluid in width and in the end I had basically rewritten Pixel but as a fluid width template.

I really liked the rounded corners of the original graphics of Pixel but did not want to deal with the hassle of rounding corners with JavaScript, image files, and other hacks. Given CSS3’s corner rounding abilities I made a conscious decision to forego CSS 2.1 compliance and instead utilize the CSS3 code.

I used to stress over my coding making sure every single line was compliant but recently that has become less important to me. Life is too short to worry about whether my design looks good on old browsers.

Most of the users who visit my blog are using the newest generation of browser so I am not missing out on too much. For those who insist on still using Internet Explorer all I can say is I’m sorry but I refuse to cater to inferior technology so things look good for you.

It might sound harsh but if you want to experience this site and others around the Internet with the best experience possible I recommend upgrading to FireFox, Safari, or Google Chrome. You have no idea what you are missing.

For those with a next generation standards compliant browser I hope you enjoy the new fluid theme. This time I think I am content. Of course I said that three revisions ago so there’s no telling how long before I change it again.

Recently I wrote about the WordPress plug-in Yet Another Photo Blog which I used to create my 1Photo2Share photo blog. This plug-in is amazing and provides all the functionality to create a very professional photo blog.

It allows you to create a WordPress post that contains a single photograph per post. This is all you need if you want to create a post every day. My problem is that I am never organized enough to remember to post each day.

What I need is a tool that will allow me to go through all of my photographs at a single sitting then identify which ones I want to share on my photo blog. Once I have a batch of images that I want to share I need a way to create a series of posts at one time.

Luckily I am not the only one who thought this would be useful functionality. Jon Haywood created a plug-in aptly named Yet Another PhotoBlog Importer/Exporter. This plug-in extends the capabilities of Yet Another PhotoBlog by giving you the tools to do a batch import or export of data from the WordPress databases.

The plug-in installs through the standard WordPress Administration Tool process. Once installed it adds an entry under Tools called Export YAPB. This will allow you to create an export file which is an XML file with all the information about your photo blog. It includes the option to restrict the file by a single author or all authors.

The second option that allows importing can be found under Tools->Import. At the bottom of the choices is YAPB Importer which will allow you to import an XML file of the format created under the Export YAPB tool.

This provides you with the file formats that you can insert a batch of entries into Yet Another Photo Blog. With this tool you can schedule several photos to be published at a specific time and date without adding each individually.

For anyone who uses Yet Another PhotoBlog, this is an extremely useful plug-in that comes highly recommended.

I seem to have a plethora of blogs now running. There is my personal blog which you are reading. I also have a baseball blog – Diary of a Diehard and a photo blog – 1 Photo 2 Share where I post a single picture per day. Until recently I was running all of these through Movable Type but as I’ve documented previously I’m moving all the blogs to WordPress.

The text-based blogs were relatively simple to move. There are migration scripts to manage the entries allowing you to export the data from the Movable Type databases and import the data into WordPress database formats. When it came time to migrate the photo blog, it was anything but trivial.

Under Movable Type I had to tweak the template system to support images rather than text as the only information. I further had problems with the commenting system causing me to turn off that functionality somewhere along the path. To make a long story short, the data was not the cleanest I have ever seen and the old adage of “garbage in, garbage out” was never more accurate than it was for this blog.

It took me several days of data manipulation of the export files to get them into any kind of shape to be imported into WordPress. The question still remained, would WordPress handle the imbedded image files any better than Movable Type.

After an initial failure of just loading the images directly I set out looking for a possible WordPress extension that would make creating a photo blog easier. Although I found several extensions claiming they managed images, there was one plug-in that seemed to come up in each conversation.

Yet Another PhotoBlog written by J.P. Jarolim was exactly what I was looking for. Installation of the plug-in used the standard WordPress administration screen. Once installed, the plug-in adds a new page to the administration tool under settings.

Within this page you can define how you want the plug-in to manage the images. The configuration is quite powerful. You can have the system collect image information from the EXIF data and use that as the post publish time and date.

You can have the system tag photos based on EXIF data contained in the pictures. If you have ImageMagick installed on your server, Yet Another PhotoBlog will use that to create thumbnails of your pictures.

The plug-in has a fairly robust feed section where you can define RSS information for your images as well as using Yahoo Media RSS. You can adapt the plug-in to display your photos in various ways and can also include custom CSS tags to get the look of the images just right on your page.

Once installed, Yet Another PhotoBlog will add an image box to the post entry screen where you can upload an image to be included in a post. From there the plug-in does the rest showing the image in its appropriate size.

Overall the plug-in has worked flawlessly. It has make it quite easy to add new posts containing images. Unfortunately the way it manages images is not compatible with how Movable Type did it meaning after importing the data from the old system there was a tremendous amount of work to be done before it was ready for publishing.

If you are starting anew building a photo blog, this is a very good plug-in. If you are migrating from another platform there is a lot of pre-work but in the end it is worth the trouble. The plug-in is actively being developed with new versions coming out regularly to fix bugs or add new functionality. If you’ve always wanted a photo blog but weren’t sure how to do it, take a look at Yet Another PhotoBlog, you’ll be glad you did.

I seem to be spending more and more time on Twitter. I initially began using Twitter out of curiosity. I had no idea how I could utilize a service that limited my conversation to 140 characters. I further questioned whether or not the service was even manageable from a personal perspective. Conversation is difficult at best and depending on the number of people in your Twitter feed, it is quite easy for the messages to be overwhelming.

That being said, I have found the service to be an absolute godsend when it comes to finding people with similar interests and keeping up to date with information of an immediate nature. I have found that Twitter is best suited for broadcasting out information to others who are following your stream. These broadcasts seem to reach a large body of people quickly and often then spark conversations that can either be attempted via Twitter but more often by other mechanism such as email or through blog comments.

When I moved my blogs from Movable Type to WordPress I wanted to make sure that I could continue to post new blog entries to my Twitter feed to notify others of when I update my blogs or add new content to my sites. Having this capability offers a service to notify users of new information without them having to subscribe to an RSS feed.

Looking over the WordPress extension library I was amazed to see how many Twitter integration programs there were. I must have tried over a dozen before finally settling on the one I am currently using.

I chose WP-Twitter written by Joseph Dolson. This plug-in seemed to have the most flexibility of all the Twitter integration packages. The installation is relatively straight forward using the Plug-In tab of the WordPress Administration Dashboard.

Once WP-Twitter is installed you will find a new menu item under the Settings tab of the Administration Dashboard. You are presented with several options which gives you a lot of flexibility as to what information will appear in your Twitter stream.

You are able to configure the plug-in to post to Twitter when a new blog entry is published and also when an entry is edited. You can publish the same for WordPress pages announcing when a page has been published or if it has been edited.

The WP-Twitter plug-in supports the use of hashtags and allows you to send custom text both before and after a message is sent. The plug-in supports both Cli.gs and Bit.ly URL shortening services and gives you some flexibility as to which service is used to condense URL length.

For those blogs who have multiple authors, the plug-in allows each blog author to have their own Twitter accounts. This flexibility allows the plug-in to be configured for a wide range of uses.

The WP-Twitter code is updated quite regularly. I have been notified of several updates to the code since I have installed it. Most of the updates work seamlessly but there have been cases when updates have broken the plug-in leaving me without Twitter integration until a new version is rolled out or I have reverted to an older version.

Care should be taken to review the change log and do a quick search on the Internet before blindly accepting an update to the plug-in. That could save you a lot of frustration and hassle. Overall though the plug-in has been relatively stable and I continue to use it despite the occasional problem that crops up.

I stumbled across the Plurk social networking site in June 2008. I had been using Twitter for a while but was struggling with how to make use of the tool to establish communication. Twitter was great for broadcasting out a message but the Plurk interface was much better at providing a visual conversation and message flow.

After trying out Plurk for a few days I was clearly hooked. It allowed me not only to easily find others who had similar interests but actually facilitated conversations. The horizontal timeline did take some getting used to and the service continues to go through some growing pains but overall it has been much more stable than Twitter for my use.

Another important aspect that kept me close to Plurk was its ability to be “themed”. The Plurk developers made an early decision to allow users to modify the look and feel of their profile and timeline through the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This really connected with my artistic side and soon I was creating outlandish themes just to entertain myself.

With my Movable Type blog I searched for an extension that would allow me to notify followers of my Plurk timeline whenever I updated my blog. Since Plurk has not officially released an API to allow developers to extend their service, it was difficult to find anyone who had created a Movable Type to Plurk communication module. I found one but shortly after I started using it, it stopped working and the developer fell off the face of the earth.

When I moved my blog to WordPress I thought I would try again to see if someone had developed a Plurk to blog plug-in this time for WordPress. Fortunately Herdian Ferdianto developed the WP-Plurk plug-in that did exactly what I wanted.

The plug-in is installed through the WordPress Administrators Dashboard like any other plug-in. Once it has been installed, you will find a new page under the Settings tab of the Administrator Dashboard. You have three input fields to enter data. These include your Plurk username, your Plurk password, and finally Plurk Template.

Of the three only the Plurk Template field requires any introduction. Here you will describe what you want WP-Plurk to post to your Plurk timeline. For my purposes I entered [shares} {{url}} ({{title}}) The [shares] means that the post to Plurk will include the Plurk qualifier Shares. The next two entries will post the URL of the WordPress post followed by the post title in parenthesis. I did this so that Plurk would make the title a clickable link to the URL.

The WP-Plurk plug-in works flawlessly. It allows WordPress posts to be included on my personal timeline and provides a way to allow me to interact with Plurk users and create conversation based upon my blog posts. Using this plug-in I have introduced new readers to my blog and I have been able to meet several new people on Plurk who have similar interests.

This is definitely a well written plug-in that is a must for anyone who is using the Plurk service. I highly recommend this extension to anyone having a WordPress blog.

I began using Facebook as a way to stay connected to my kids. I know that sounds kind of funny but as the older girls graduated from high school and began their college careers, we turned to Facebook to try and stay connected. They could post pictures and update their status to let me know what was going on and I could do the same so that they felt like they were still a part of the family home life. Somehow though Facebook kind of blossomed and became a larger service.

Soon I had friend requests from current people in my life as well as classmates and friends who I had not seen in ages. My problem became how to keep my friends on Facebook informed of what was happening in my life. I had a personal blog and a baseball blog that had most of this information but I found myself repeating much of the same information to my Facebook friends.

Clearly what I needed was a way to have my WordPress blog feed into my Facebook profile stream so that both groups were made aware of when I added or changed information on my WordPress blog.

A quick search resulted in more choices than I cared to think about for integrating WordPress with Facebook. I think I must have tried about every integration point out there before finally settling on Wordbook a plug-in written by Robert Tsai.

What drew me to Wordbook was the simplicity of the interface and the flexibility it provided to allow me to choose what would be posted to Facebook. The plug-in is implemented like any standard extension through the Plug-in tab of the Administration Dashboard of WordPress.

Once Wordbook is implemented it will add a page to the Settings page of the WordPress Administration Dashboard. Clicking on the Wordbook settings page will allow you to connect WordPress to your Facebook profile. You will need to allow access through Facebook and once configured your Facebook feed will be updated with an excerpt from the blog entry along with a link allowing your Facebook readers to be redirected to your blog to continue reading the content.

The connection is fairly seamless and once initially set up works completely in the background. You should be aware that if a Facebook user comments on your blog entry through Facebook that comment does not appear in your blog. I didn’t expect it to but I wanted to make sure everyone is clear about the level of integration that Wordbook provides.

I’ve been very happy with the functionality of Wordbook and recommend it to anyone who is looking to integrate their blog stream into their Facebook profile.

It seems like everywhere we turn these days another social networking site is springing up. From My Space to Facebook to LinkedIn to Twitter to Plurk there is always a new service being brought up to help us connect with other computer users with similar interests. The problem with all of these services is that you never know which ones are the ones where your friends are actually hanging out. After all there what good is a social network where you are the only user?

As a precaution from being caught on the wrong service, we just enroll in all of them. The problem with this approach is that you can’t quite remember which sites you are on and what you used for your user ID when you signed up. Even if you do remember all of this information, how do you notify all of your friends and readers which services you are a member of?

This was my dilemma. I was trying to embrace social networking but found I was spending way too much time managing my various accounts and attempting to build a following and find friends and others who share similar interests. Once I had all of this information I needed a better way of letting people know where they might be able to find me.

WordPress in its generic form didn’t help much with my problem. So like so many times before, I began searching for a plug-in that would help me better manage my social networking identities and allow me to tell my blog readers where they could find me.

After a fairly extensive search I came across a plug-in written by Kareem Sultan called Social Links. This plug-in is a widget that allows the blog owner to identify which social networks they belong to and provides a graphical icon in the blog sidebar that will link to the user account.

The networks that Social Links recognizes is just a subset of all the social networks currently in existence but does include most of the major ones such as Digg, Facebook, Flicker, LinkedIn, My Space, Plurk, Twitter, and YouTube.

The plug-in is installed using the standard installation procedure through the Administration Dashboard. Once it is installed, Social Links will appear in the list of Widgets under the Appearance tab of the Administration Dashboard.

The widget can be installed in the sidebar and you are allowed to change the name that will appear on the heading. This of course means that the plug-in does require that your WordPress theme be widget-aware.

Under the Tools section of the Administration Dashboard the plug-in installs a Social Links menu item. Here you are able to select the social network in which you have a user ID. You are then asked for user or profile information that will allow your blog user to find your account on the specific social network.

The plug-in includes icons for each of the social networks it supports. I have to be honest; I was less than impressed with the included icons. They seemed too small and did not offer enough detail. I was able to modify the plug-in to use the icon set that I created for my Joomla My Social Network Plug-in so that I had consistency between the two systems.

Overall the Social Links plug-in was a good starting point to provide blog readers with access to my social network profiles. It was not a perfect fit for my needs but the plug-in was well written to allow for easy modification to make it a better fit.

Sometimes it’s all about style. If you can’t baffle them with content, you can at least dazzle them with look and feel. One of the hot trends on the Internet these days is the use of a shadowbox effect for graphics. This effect basically dims the screen and then displays a larger graphic on the screen as an inline pop-up. I know that sounds like a contradiction but I you know what I mean.

Most of the shadowbox effects in use today are done through JavaScript. WordPress does not include shadowbox effects when you first install the system. Luckily there are several options available that will provide this effect for you.

After a little research I selected a plug-in written by Matt Martz called Shadowbox JS. One of the reasons I selected this particular plug-in was that it allows the shadowbox effect to not only be assigned to image files but will also allow the effect to be used on other types of media such as a web site, a video, or really any other media type that is supported by WordPress.

The plug-in is installed using the standard WordPress method through the Plug-In page of the Administration Dashboard. Once installed, Shadowbox JS will create a new menu item in the Settings section of the Dashboard called Shadowbox JS.

Through the settings page you decide which JavaScript library you wish to use, the language you will use, which players are supported, and standard sizes for certain types of contents. Most of the settings can remain at their default values making it relatively simple to implement.

Once installed you invoke the shadowbox effect by adding rel=”shadowbox” to the image tag or other media tag. The plug-in will intercept this and execute the appropriate JavaScript. This is one way of adding a little bit of artistic style to your Blog and perhaps differentiate it from other sites.

I recommend you give it a try and see for yourself what a difference it makes in serving up content on your site.

When I began writing my blog, I received some very valuable advice, always protect your content and its ownership. While much of my writing is available and free to the reader, I still would like to retain all of the rights to the content so that I am at least aware of how hit may be being used. Much of this can be accomplished simply using a Creative Commons License.

I won’t bore you with a lengthy discussion of the value of a Creative Commons License nor will I try to explain the various types of licenses you can obtain for your blog content. I will leave that up to the reader to determine whether they need a license and if so what type of license would best cover their particular content.

Once you have decided on a license type, it is important to tell your readers what type of license you are using so that they know what is expected if they may be interested in using your content for their own purposes.

With Movable Type, the software included configuration options that would place the appropriate license graphic and text on your blog. This was easy and quite valuable. When I migrated to WordPress I soon found that configuring a Creative Commons License was not part of the core software.

After a quick search of the plug-ins directory I found a Creative Commons License Widget that would allow you to choose the type of license you want your content covered by. The widget would then display the appropriate license text and graphic in your sidebar.

The plug-in is installed using the standard plug-in installation procedure within the WordPress Administration tool. Once installed, the Creative Commons License will be listed among the available widgets that you can install on your sidebar.

This plug-in does require that your WordPress theme be widget-aware which basically means that the theme creator included the code necessary to recognize the use of widgets and manage their location accordingly.

From the Widget menu item of the Dashboard, choose the Creative Commons License Widget. Clicking the down arrow will allow you to select the appropriate type of license for your content. Once that is finished it will display the correct license graphic and text on your blog.

This is a simple and straightforward widget that makes it easy to add a license to your blog letting everyone know how your content may be used.

When you install a WordPress site, the system automatically creates an Administrator user account and assigns it a User ID. This is done to allow you to log into the Administration tool to manage your blog installation. Unfortunately you are not allowed to select the User ID that is created. Furthermore you are not allowed to change it once it is created. Normally that would not be a big deal but if you happen to be migrating from an existing blog, you end up with one of two scenarios.

First you may create new User IDs for the authors of entries being migrated at which point you end up having to manage multiple accounts if you are not careful. The other scenario is that you map your existing WordPress Admin user to the migrated posts, which too ended up being a little weird as the older posts had the previous user name but the WordPress site has the new User ID. Neither of these is optimal and so I went looking for an alternative.

What I found was a WordPress plug-in written by Janis Elsts appropriately named Change Admin Username. This simple plug-in allows you to change the User ID of the WordPress administrator without resorting to manipulating the database files directly.

The plug-in installs like any standard plug-in and adds a new entry to the Users section of the Administration Dashboard. This new entry is called Change Username. Selecting this item from the User menu will display the current Username of the administrator and gives you an input field where you can enter the new name you want to use for the User ID for the administrator account. Once you have entered the new User ID you simply click the Save Changes button and the database files are modified with the new ID.

For anyone who has migrated from another system or just does not like the User ID assigned by default by WordPress, this plug-in allows you to set it to something more meaningful to you. By changing the default User ID you also close one potential security hole by now requiring a would-be hacker to have to guess the User ID as well as the password. That in my mind is a very good thing.